Something felt a bit off about this film right from the beginning. I got the sense of "otherworldly dread" and surrealness it was trying to evoke with its music cues and atmosphere, but for some reason this didn't seem to properly work. It came across less as surreal and atmospheric and more like a bunch of stupid idiots willfully letting everyone around them think they're drunken lunatics.
Fisherman Tom and later his son Harry are inexplicably hearing random growling noises in static and end up usually blacking out and losing hours at a time, wherein they usually wake up to a mess around them. This leads everyone around Harry in particular to think he's getting blackout drunk and wrecking his house. Because they have to stick to the weird moody aura of the film, he doesn't bother explaining anything to anyone except getting belligerent and telling people he's not drunk.
Harry occasionally listens to some conspiracy theory-minded friend of his, who keeps pointing to the mass die-off of fish and birds in the region as being somehow related to what Harry is experiencing.
Unfortunately, so little is done with all of this that him being an idiot getting blackout drunk every night is the only thing that makes sense within the context of the movie itself. The film even briefly flirts with the idea that maybe this is some manner of mental or psychological trauma or damage Harry is suffering causing him to hallucinate, but absolutely nothing comes of this.
Instead, having failed to leave any substantive clues as to what is happening, the film is forced near the end to have an expo-dump basically reveal everything in the form of "local crazy guy who becomes increasingly belligerent as he explains everything, thus scaring off the very people who need to know what he has to say".
So little is made of this prior to the expo-dump that it almost feels like it was an idea added on long after filming began. Very little in the film would have to be changed if the BIG REVEAL were completely changed or removed altogether. There's just not enough content to work with here.
The story is instead one that would've worked much better as a short story. A very short story. Or at least a story with more imagination than this one.
Fisherman Tom and later his son Harry are inexplicably hearing random growling noises in static and end up usually blacking out and losing hours at a time, wherein they usually wake up to a mess around them. This leads everyone around Harry in particular to think he's getting blackout drunk and wrecking his house. Because they have to stick to the weird moody aura of the film, he doesn't bother explaining anything to anyone except getting belligerent and telling people he's not drunk.
Harry occasionally listens to some conspiracy theory-minded friend of his, who keeps pointing to the mass die-off of fish and birds in the region as being somehow related to what Harry is experiencing.
Unfortunately, so little is done with all of this that him being an idiot getting blackout drunk every night is the only thing that makes sense within the context of the movie itself. The film even briefly flirts with the idea that maybe this is some manner of mental or psychological trauma or damage Harry is suffering causing him to hallucinate, but absolutely nothing comes of this.
Instead, having failed to leave any substantive clues as to what is happening, the film is forced near the end to have an expo-dump basically reveal everything in the form of "local crazy guy who becomes increasingly belligerent as he explains everything, thus scaring off the very people who need to know what he has to say".
So little is made of this prior to the expo-dump that it almost feels like it was an idea added on long after filming began. Very little in the film would have to be changed if the BIG REVEAL were completely changed or removed altogether. There's just not enough content to work with here.
The story is instead one that would've worked much better as a short story. A very short story. Or at least a story with more imagination than this one.